The 2017 Minnesota @Twins? I’ll Take the 1967 Chicago @Cubs.

The sports pages are all agog over the fact the Minnesota Twins, who were 59-103 last year, have made the playoffs this year.  It’s the first time it’s ever happened, they say.  Which is technically true, but it’s not because the Minnesota Twins have improved more than any other team from one season to the next.  It’s because so many teams go to the playoffs today. 

Since 2012, ten out of thirty teams make the playoffs every year.  That doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it does mean things are going to happen that have never happened before.  For example, the Twins.  I understand the Twins improved a lot this year, but the only reason they are making the postseason is because five teams in each league make the playoffs now, instead of four teams, which is the way it was from 1995 to 2011.  Because if only four teams from each league made the playoffs, the Twins wouldn’t be going.  So when people say that the Twins are the first team to lose 100 games one year and make the playoffs the next year, they are really just saying the Twins are the only team to have done it in the last six years. 

Other teams have made improvements from one year to the next like the Twins this year – or even bigger.  The reason some of those teams didn’t make the playoffs was that they didn’t have as many teams going to the postseason in the past.  For example, the 1967 Cubs.  While Boston Red Sox fans like to talk about the ’67 Red Sox and “the Impossible Dream,”¹ the Chicago Cubs had a bigger improvement that year.  In 1966, the Cubs were 59-103, just like the Twins last year.  (When Leo Durocher took over the Cubs after the 1965 season, he famously said that they were not an eighth place team.  They promptly finished tenth in 1966.)  The Cubs improved by 28½ games in 1967², to a record of 87-74, a better record than the Twins are going to finish with this year.  But in 1967, only one of the ten teams in the National League went to the postseason (the postseason just had one round back then; it was called the World Series), so the Cubs don’t get talked about.

I can assure you, though, Cubs fans remember.  I recall Wayne Messmer talking about the 1967 season, and particularly Sunday, July 2, 1967, at a Cubs Convention one time.  The Cubs were ½ game out of first place when the day started.  After the Cardinals lost the first game of their doubleheader against the Mets, the Cubs beat the Reds, 4 to 1, behind Fergie Jenkins, which meant the Cubs were in first place all by themselves!  Even after the game was over, the fans just stayed in the park, yelling and screaming. 

Lou Boudreau, one of the Cubs radio broadcasters on W-G-N, said he had never seen anything like it: “The fans went wild in Cleveland in 1948, but demonstrations like today’s came only in the last two weeks of the season ….  But this is only early July.  But it’s great.”

When the Cardinals won their second game against the Mets, they moved into a tie for first with the Cubs.  But for three hours, we were in first place all by ourselves – for the first time in who knew how many years.  And we were excited.

Here is a picture of the Chicago Tribune sports page from the next day, telling of the Cubs making it into first place:

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¹ Boston Red Sox fans like to talk about themselves a lot, as everybody who is not from Boston knows.
² The Red Sox improved 20 games in 1967, going from 72-90 in 1966 to 92-70 in 1967.